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Is The Silver COT Bullish? - Dave Kranzler

There’s been an abundance of commentary on the net long position of the “Swap Dealers” in Comex silver futures per the COT report. As of the latest COT report, the Swap Dealers are net long almost 22k silver contracts. This is unprecedented. At the same time, the “Large Speculators,” the majority of which is comprised of the “managed money” (hedge funds) sub-component, are net short nearly 17k silver contracts. The data my business partner tracks goes back to April 2004. In that period of time, the Large Speculator category has never been short until February 2018.

On the surface, the silver COT report appears to be extraordinarily bullish. However, there’s a bigger picture not discussed by “COT” analysts that includes the other segment of the large “Commercial” category and the COT structure of gold.

The other “commercial” segment includes producers of silver, commercial “users” of silver (jewelers) and “merchants.” It would be naive to assume that the Comex banks do not throw a large percentage of their gold/silver short positions in to the this category. That would be within the CFTC regulations. Hell, JP Morgan was fined a little over $650k a few years when it was caught by the CFTC putting a portion of its trades into the “speculator” category of trader. This was not within regulations. $650k is a joke and would not deter Jamie Dimon from speeding on the Long Island Expressway let alone manipulating the silver market.

Currently the “Commercial” segment per the latest COT report is net short 2.6k contracts. Again, this is by far the lowest net short position in the Commercial category going back to at least April 2004 and likely ever. The closest the net short position has been before now was for the June 3, 2014 COT report, when the Commercial category net short in silver was down to 9.6k. Back then silver was trading at $18.80. It bounced briefly over $21 by early July then headed lower from there.

While the silver COT appears to be exceptionally bullish, it needs to be analyzed in the context of the gold COT structure. The gold COT structure currently, based on historical statistics, is neutral but trending toward bullish. I looked at data going back to the beginning of the current bull market cycle in the metals, which is commonly considered to be early-December 2015.